Vol. II. No. 7. Five cents. 



Per Year, Fifty cents 




to tbe Ibomea of 
Hmcrican Hiitbora 



Ibawtborne 



BY 

George William Curtis 



JULY. 1896 



Ne'vy York and London : (5. |P. 

Iputnam's Sons ^ ^ 

New Rochelle, N. Y, The 

Knickerbocker Press. vr 




^ -K 



Xittle 3ourne^0 

SERIES FOR 1896 

Xittle 5ournci25 to tbc "Ibomes of 
amecican autbors 

The papers below specified, were, with the 
exception of that contributed by the editor, 
Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late 
G. P. Putnam, in 1853, in a series entitled 
Homes of American Authors. It is now 
nearly half a century since this series (which 
won for itself at the time a very noteworthy 
prestige) was brought before the public ; an^^ 
the present publishers feel that no apology i? 
needed in presenting to a new generation of 
American readers papers of such distinctive 
biographical interest and literary value. 

No. I, Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis. 
" 2, Bryant, by Caroline M. Kirkland. 
" 3, Prescott, by Geo. S. Hillard. 
" 4, Lowell, by Charles F. Briggs. 
*• 5, Simms, by Wm. Cullen Bryant. 
** 6, Walt Whitman, by Elbert Hubbard. 
" 7, Hawthorne, by Geo. W^m. Curlis. 
" 8, Audubon, by Parke Godwin. 
" 9, Irving, by H. T. Tuckerman. 

*• 10, Longfellow by Geo. Wm. Curtis. 

" II, Everett, by Geo. S. Hillard. 

*' 12, Bancroft, by Geo. W. Greene. 

The above papers, which will form the 
series of Little Journeys for the year 1896, 
will be issued monthly, beginning January, 
in the same general style as the series of 
1895, at sects, a year. Single copies, 5 cts., 
postage paid. 

Entered at the Post Office, New Rochelle, N. Y., 
as second class matter 



Copyright, 1896, by 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 * 29 West 230 Street, New York 

24 Bedford Street, Strand, London 

The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N. Y. 






NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



197 



" It was sometimes the case, ' ' continued Grand- 
father, "that affrays happened between such 
wUd young men as these and small parties of the 
soldiers. No weapons had hitherto been used 
except fists or cudgels. But when men have 
loaded muskets in their hands, it is easy to fore- 
tell that they will soon be turned against the 
bosoms of those who provoke their anger." 

" Grandfather," said little Alice, looking fear- 
fully into his face, " your voice sounds as though 
you were going to tell us something awful ! " 
Grandfather's Chair. 



198 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



BY GEORGE WII,I,IAM CURTIS.* 



HAWTHORNE has himself drawn 
the picture of the " Old Manse " 
in Concord. He has given to it 
that quiet richness of coloring which 
ideally belongs to an old country man- 
sion. It seems so fitting a residence for 
one who loves to explore the twilight of 
antiquity — and the gloomier the better — 
that the visitor, among the felicities of 
whose life was included the freedom of 
the Manse, could not but fancy that our 
author's eyes first saw the daylight en- 
chanted by the slumberous orchard be- 

* Written in 1853 for Putnam's Homes of Ameri- 
can Authors. 

199 



IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 



hind the house, cr tranquillized into 
twilight by the spacious avenue in front. 
The character of his imagination, and 
the golden gloom of its blossoming, com- 
pletely harmonize with the rusty, gable- 
roofed old house upon the river side, and 
the reader of his books would be sure 
that his boyhood and youth knew no 
other friends than the dreaming river, 
and the melancholy meadows and droop- 
ing foliage of its vicinity. 

Since the reader, however, would 
greatly mistake if he fancied this, in 
good sooth, the ancestral halls of the 
Hawthomes, — the genuine Hawthorn- 
den, — he will be glad to save the credit 
of his fancy by knowing that it was here 
our author's bridal tour, — which com- 
menced in Boston, then three hours 
away, — ended, and his married life be- 
gan. Here, also, his first child was born, 
and here those sad and silver mosses ac- 
cumulated upon his fancy, from which 
he heaped so soft a bed for our dreaming. 
"Between two tall gate-posts of rough 

200 



Batbanlel Ibavvtborne 



hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen 
from its hinges at some unknown epoch) 
we beheld the gray front of the old 
parsonage, terminating the vista of an 
avenue of black ash trees." It was a 
pleasant spring day in the year 1843, and 
as they entered the house, nosegays of 
fresh flowers, arranged by friendly hands, 
welcomed them to Concord and summer. 
The dark-haired man, who led his wife 
along the avenue that afternoon, had 
been recently an officer of the customs in 
Boston, before which he had led a soli- 
tary life in Salem. Graduated with 
Longfellow at Bowdoin College, in 
Maine, he had lived a hermit in respect- 
able Salem, an absolute recluse even from 
his own family, walking out by night 
and writing wild tales by day, most of 
which were burnt in his bachelor fire, 
and some of which, in newspapers, maga- 
zines, and annuals, led a wandering, un- 
certain , and mostly unnoticed life. Those 
tales, among this class, which were at- 
tainable, he collected into a small vol- 
201 



•Watbanicl Ibawtbocnc 



ume, and apprising the world that they 
were " twice-told," sent them forth anew 
to make their own way, in the year 1841. 
But he piped to the world, and it did not 
dance. He wept to it, and it did not 
mourn. The book, however, as all good 
books do, made its way into various 
hearts. Yet the few penetrant minds 
which recognized a remarkable power 
and a method of strange fascination in 
the stories, did not make the public, nor 
influence the public mind. " I was," he 
says in the last edition of these tales, 
** the most unknown author in America." 
Full of glancing wit, of tender satire, of 
exquisite natural deception, of subtle and 
strange analysis of human life, darkly 
passionate and weird, they yet floated un- 
bailed barques upon the sea of publicity, 
— unbailed, but laden and gleaming at 
every crevice with the true treasure of 
Cathay. 

Bancrofl:, then Collector in Boston, 
prompt to recognize and to honor tal- 
ent, made the dreaming story-teller a 
202 



Batbaniel Ibawtbornc 



surveyor in the custom-house, thus open- 
ing to him a new range of experience. 
From the society of phantoms he stepped 
upon Long Wharf and plumply con- 
fronted Captain Cuttle and Dirck Hat- 
teraick. It was no less romance to our 
author. There is no greater error of 
those who are called " practical men," 
than the supposition that life is, or can 
be, other than a dream to a dreamer. 
Shut him up in a counting-room, barri- 
cade him with bales of merchandise and 
limit his library to the leger and cash- 
book, and his prospect to the neighboring 
signs ; talk " Bills receivable " and " Sun- 
dries Dr. to Cash" to him forever, and 
you are only a very amusing or very 
annoying phantom to him. The mer- 
chant prince might as well hope to make 
himself a poet, as the poet a practical or 
practicable man. He has laws to obey 
not at all the less stringent because men 
of a different temperament refuse to ac- 
knowledge them, and he is held to a 
loyalty quite beyond their conceptions. 
203 



Batbanfel Ibawtbornc 



So Captain Cuttle and Dirck Hatter- 
aick were as pleasant figures to our author 
in the picture of life, as any others. He 
went daily upon the vessels, looked, and 
listened, and learned ; was a favorite of 
the sailors, as such men always are, — did 
his work faithfully, and having dreamed 
his dream upon Long Wharf, was married 
and slipped up to the Old Manse, and a 
new chapter in the romance. It opened 
in *'the most delightful little nook of a 
study that ever offered its snug seclusion 
to a scholar." Of the three years in the 
Old Manse the prelude to the Mosses 
is the most perfect history, and of the 
quality of those years the '* Mosses " 
themselves are sufficient proof They 
were mostly written in the little study, 
and originally published in the Demo- 
cratic Review^ then edited by Haw- 
thorne's friend O'SuUivan. 

To the inhabitants of Concord, how- 
ever, our author was as much a phantom 
and a fable as the old Pastor of the parish, 
dead half a century before, and whose 
204 



IRatbanfel Ibawtborne 



faded portrait in the attic was gradually 
rejoining its original in native dust. The 
gate, fallen from its hinges in a remote 
antiquity, was never re-hung. The 
wheel-track leading to the door re- 
mained still overgrown with grass. No 
bold villager ever invaded the sleep 
of the glimmering shadows in the 
avenue. At evening no lights gleamed 
from the windows. Scarce once in many 
months did the single old knobby-faced 
coachman at the railroad bring a fare to 
"Mr. Hawthorne's." ''Is there any- 
body in the old house ? ' ' sobbed the old 
ladies in despair, imbibing tea of a livid 
green. The knocker, which everybody 
had enjoyed the right of lifting to sum- 
mon the good old Pastor, no temerity 
now dared touch. Heavens ! what if the 
figure in the mouldy portrait should peer, 
in answer, over the eaves, and shake 
solemnly his decaying surplice ! Nay, 
what if the mysterious man himself 
should answer the summons and come to 
the door ! It is easy to summon spirits, 
205 



matbanfel Ibawtborne 



— but if they come ? Collective Concord, 

mowing in the river meadows, embraced 

the better part of valor and left the 

knocker untouched. A cloud of romance 

suddenly fell out of the heaven of fancy 

and enveloped the Old Manse : 

In among the bearded barley 
The reaper reaping late and early 

did not glance more wistfully toward the 
island of Shalott and its mysterious lady 
than the reapers of Concord rye looked 
at the Old Manse and wondered over its 
inmate. 

Sometimes, in the forenoon, a darkly 
clad figure was seen in the little garden- 
plot putting in com or melon seed, and 
gravely hoeing. It was a brief apparition . 
The farmer passing toward town and see- 
ing the solitary cultivator, lost his faith 
in the fact and believed he had dreamed, 
when, upon returning, he saw no sign of 
life, except, possibly, upon some Monday, 
the ghostly skirt of a shirt flapping 
spectrally in the distant orchard. Day 
dawned and darkened over the lonely 
206 



IRatbanicl fbawtborne 



house. Summer with "buds and bird- 
voices " came singing in from the South, 
and clad the old ash trees in deeper green, 
the Old Manse, in profounder mystery. 
Gorgeous autumn came to visit the story- 
teller in his little western stud}^, and de- 
parting, wept rainbows among his trees. 
"Winter impatiently swept down the hill 
opposite, rifling the trees of each last 
clinging bit of Summer, as if thrusting 
aside opposing barriers and determined 
to search the mystery. But his white 
robes floated around the Old Manse, 
ghostly as the decaying surplice of the 
old Pastor's portrait, and in the snowy 
seclusion of Winter the mystery was as 
mysterious as ever. 

Occasionally Emerson, or Bllery Chan- 
ning, or Henry Thoreau, — some Poet, as 
once Whittier, journeying to the Merri- 
mac, or an old Brook Farmer who re- 
membered Miles Coverdale, with Arca- 
dian sympathy, — went down the avenue 
and disappeared in the house. Some- 
times a close observer, had he been am- 
207 



flatbaniel Ibawtborne 



bushed among the long grasses of the 
orchard, might have seen the host and 
one of his guests emerging at the back 
door, and sauntering to the river-side, 
step into the boat, and float off until 
they faded in the shadow. The spectacle 
would not have lessened the romance. 
If it were afternoon, — one of the spec- 
trally sunny afternoons which often be- 
witch that region, — he would be only the 
more convinced that there was some- 
thing inexplicable in the whole matter 
of this man whom nobody knew, who 
was never once seen at town-meeting, 
and concerning whom it was whispered 
that he did not constantly attend church 
all day, although he occupied the rever- 
end parsonage of the village, and had 
unmeasured acres of manuscript sermons 
in his attic, beside the nearly extinct 
portrait of an utterly extinct clergyman. 
Mrs. RadcliflFe and Monk Lewis were 
nothing to this ; and the awe-stricken 
observer, if he could creep safely out of 
the long grass, he did not fail to do so 
208 



Batbaniel t)awtl)orne 



quietly, fortifying his courage by remem- 
bering stories of the genial humanity of 
the last old Pastor who inhabited the 
Manse, and who for fifty years was the 
bland and beneficent Pope of Concord. 
A genial, gracious old man, whose mem- 
ory is yet sweet in the village, and who, 
wedded to the grave traditions of New 
England theology, believed of his young 
relative, Waldo Emerson, as Miss Flighty, 
touching her forehead, said of her land- 
lord, that he was " m, quite m," but was 
proud to love in him the hereditary integ- 
rity of noble ancestors. 

This old gentleman, — an eminent fig- 
ure in the history of the Manse, and in 
all reminiscences of Concord, — partook 
sufficiently of mundane weaknesses to 
betray his mortality. Hawthorne de- 
scribes him watching the battle of Con- 
cord, from his study window. But when 
the uncertainty of that dark moment 
had so happily resulted, and the first 
battle-ground of the Revolution had be- 
come a spot of hallowed and patriotic 
209 



flatbaniel Ibawtbornc 



consideration, it was a pardonable pride 
in the good old man to order his servant, 
whenever there was company, to assist 
him in reaping the glory due to the 
owner of a spot so sacred. Accordingly, 
when some reverend or distinguished 
guest sat with the Pastor in his little 
parlor, or, of a summer evening, at the 
hospitable door under the trees, Jere- 
miah or Nicodemus, the cow-boy, would 
deferentially approach and inquire : 

*' Into what pasture shall I turn the cow 
to-night, Sir?" 

And the old gentleman would audibly 
reply : 

*'Into the battle-field, Nicodemus, into 
the battle-field ! " 

Then naturally followed wonder, in- 
quiry, a walk in the twilight to the river- 
bank, the old gentleman's story, the 
corresponding respect of the listening 
visitor, and the consequent quiet com- 
placency and harmless satisfaction in the 
clergyman's bosom. That throb of pride 
was the one drop of peculiar advantage 

2IO 



naatbantel Ibawtborn^ 



which the Pastor distilled from the revo- 
lution. He could not but fancy that he 
had a hand in so famous a deed accom- 
plished upon land now his own, and de- 
meaned himself, accordingly, with conti- 
nental dignity. 

The pulpit, however, was his especial 
sphere. There he reigned supreme ; there 
he exhorted, rebuked, and advised, as in 
the days of Mather. There he inspired 
that profound reverence, of which he was 
so proud, and which induced the matrons 
of the village, when he was coming to 
make a visit, to bedizen the children in 
their Sunday suits, to parade the best 
tea-pot, and to offer the most capacious 
chair. In the pulpit he delivered every- 
thing with the pompous cadence of the 
elder New England clergy, and a sly joke 
is told at the expense of his even temper, 
that on one occasion, when loftily read- 
ing the hymn, he encountered a blot upon 
the page quite obliterating the word, 
but without losing the cadence, although 
in a very vindictive tone at the truant 

211 



matbanfel Ibawtborne 



•word, or the culprit who erased it, — he 
finished the reading as follows : 

He sits upon the throne above, 

Attending- angels bless, 
While Justice, Mercy, Truth, and— (an- 
other word which is blotted out) 

Compose his princely dress. 

We linger around the old Manse and 
its occupants as fondly as Hawthorne, 
but no more fondly than all who have 
been once within the influence of its 
spell. There glimmers in my memory a 
few hazy days, of a tranquil and half-pen- 
sive character, which I am conscious were 
passed in and around the house, and their 
pensiveness I know to be only that touch 
of twilight which inhered in the house 
and its associations. Beside the few 
chance visitors I have named, there were 
city friends, occasionally, figures quite 
unknown to the village, who came pre- 
ceded by the steam-shriek of the locomo- 
tive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and 
were seen no more. The owner was as 
much a vague name to me as any one. 

During Hawthorne's first year's resi- 

212 



•Katbaniel Ibawtborne 



dence in Concord, I had driven up witli 
some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. 
Emerson's. It was in the winter and a 
great wood-fire blazed upon the hos- 
pitable hearth. There were various men 
and women of note assembled, and I, 
who listened attentively to all the fine 
things that were said, was for some time 
scarcely aware of a man who sat upon 
the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, 
his head slightly thrown forward upon 
his breast, and his bright eyes clearly 
burning under his black brow. As I 
drifted down the stream of talk, this per- 
son, who sat silent as a shadow, looked 
to me, as Webster might have looked had 
he been a poet, — a kind of poetic Web- 
ster. He rose and walked to the win- 
dow, and stood quietly there for a long 
time, watching the dead white landscape. 
No appeal was made to him, nobody 
looked after him, the conversation flowed 
steadily on as if everyone understood 
that his silence was to be respected. It 
was the same thing at table. In vain the 

2X3 



IPlatbaniel Ibawtbotne 



silent man imbibed aesthetic tea. What- 
ever fancies it inspired did not flower at 
his lips. But there was a light in his eye 
which assured me that nothing was lost. 
So supreme was his silence that it pres- 
ently engrossed me to the exclusion of 
everything else. There was very bril- 
liant discourse, but this silence was much 
more poetic and fascinating. Fine things 
were said by the philosophers, but much 
finer things were implied by the dumb- 
ness of this gentleman with heavy brows 
and black hair. When he presently rose 
and went, Emerson, with the " slow, wise 
smile " that breaks over his face like day 
over the sky, said : 

"Hawthorne rides well his horse of the 
night." 

Thus he remained in my memory, a 
shadow, a phantom, until more than a 
year afterward. Then I came to live in 
Concord. Bvery day I passed his house, 
but when the villagers, thinking that 
perhaps I had some clue to the mystery, 
said : 

214 



IRatbaniel Ibawtbocnc 



*' Do you kuow this Mr. Hawthorne ? " 
I said : ** No," and trusted to Time. 

Time justified my confidence and one 
day I, too, went down the avenue, and 
disappeared in the house. I mounted 
those mysterious stairs to that apocry- 
phal study. I saw *' the cheerful coat of 
paint, and golden-tinted paper-hangings, 
lighting up the small apartment ; while 
the shadow of a willow tree, that swept 
against the overhanging eaves, atem- 
pered the cheery western sunshine." I 
looked from the little northern window 
whence the old Pastor watched the bat- 
tle, and in the small dining-room beneath 
it, upon the first floor there were 

Dainty chicken, snow-white bread, 

and the golden juices of Italian vine- 
yards, which still feast insatiable mem- 
ory." 

Our author occupied the Old Manse 

for three years. During that time he 

was not seen probably, by more than a 

dozen of the villagers. His walks could 

215 



matbaniel Ibawtborne 



easily avoid the town, and upon the river 
he was always sure of solitude. It was 
his favorite habit to bathe every evening 
in the river, after nightfall, and in that 
part of it over which the old bridge 
stood, at which the battle was fought. 
Sometimes, but rarely, his boat accom- 
panied another up the stream, and I re- 
call the silent and preternatural vigor 
with which, on one occasion, he wielded 
his paddle to counteract the bad rowing 
of a friend who conscientiously consid- 
ered it his duty to do something and not 
let Hawthorne work alone ; but who, 
with every stroke, neutralized all Haw- 
thorne's efforts. I suppose he would 
have struggled until he fell senseless 
rather than ask his friend to desist. His 
principle seemed to be, if a man cannot 
understand without talking to him, it is 
quite useless to talk, because it is imma- 
terial whether such a man understands 
or not. His own sympathy was so broad 
and sure, that although nothing had been 
said for hours, his companion knew that 
2i6 



•flatbaniel Ibawtborne 



not a tiling had escaped his eye, nor had 
a single pulse of beauty in the day, or 
scene, or society, failed to thrill his heart. 
In this way his silence was most social. 
Everything seemed to have been said. 
It was a Barmecide feast of discourse, 
from which a greater satisfaction resulted 
than from an actual banquet. 

When a formal attempt was made to 
desert this style of conversation, the re- 
sult was ludicrous. Once Emerson and 
Thoreau arrived to pay a call. They 
were shown into the little parlor upon 
the avenue, and Hawthorne presently 
entered. Each of the guests sat upright 
in his chair like a Roman senator ; to 
them, Hawthorne, like a Dacian king. 
The call went on, but in a most melan- 
choly manner. The host sat perfectly 
still, or occasionally propounded a ques- 
tion which Thoreau answered accurately, 
and there the thread broke short off. 
Emerson delivered sentences that only 
needed the setting of an essay to charm 
the world ; but the whole visit was a 
217 



IRatbanlel Ibawtborne 



vague ghost of the Monday Kvening Club 
at Mr. Emerson's, — it was a great failure. 
Had they all been lying idly upon the 
river brink, or strolling in Thoreau's 
blackberry pastures, the result would 
have been utterly dififerent. But impris- 
oned in the proprieties of a parlor, each 
a wild man in his way, with a necessity 
of talking inherent in the nature of the 
occasion, there was only a waste of treas- 
ure. This was the only " call " in which 
I ever knew Hawthorne to be involved. 

In Mr. Emerson's house, I said it 
seemed always morning. But Haw- 
thorne's black-ash trees and scraggy ap- 
ple-boughs shaded ** A land in which 
it seemed always afternoon." I do not 
doubt that the lotus grew along the 
grassy marge of the Concord behind his 
house, and that it was served, subtly con- 
cealed, to all his guests. The house, its 
inmates, and its life, lay, dream-like, 
upon the edge of the little village. You 
fancied that they all came together, and 
were glad that at length some idol of 
218 



matbanlel Ibawtborne 



your imagination, some poet whose spell 
had held you, and would hold you, for 
ever, was housed as such a poet should be. 
During the lapse of the three years 
since the bridal tour of twenty miles 
ended at the " two tall gate-posts of rough 
hewn stone," a little wicker wagon had 
appeared at intervals upon the avenue, 
and a placid babe, whose eyes the soft 
Concord day had touched with the blue 
of its beauty, lay looking tranquilly up 
at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty 
lullabies over hsr sleep. The tranquillity 
of the golden-haired Una was the living 
and breathing type of the dreamy life of 
the old Manse. Perhaps, that being at- 
tained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our 
author was not surprised nor displeased 
when the hints came, ** growing more 
and more distinct, that the owner of the 
old house was pining for his native air." 
One afternoon I entered the study, and 
learned from its occupant that the last 
story he should ever write there was 
written . The son of the old pastor yearned 
219 



IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 



for his homestead. The light of another 
summer would seek its poet in the Old 
Manse, but in vain. 

While Hawthorne had been quietly 
writing in the ** most delightful nook of 
a study," Mr. Polk had been elected 
President, and Mr. Bancroft in the Cabi- 
net did not forget his old friend the sur- 
veyor in the custom-house. There came 
suggestions and offers of various attrac- 
tions. Still loving New England, would 
he tarry there, or, as inspector of woods 
and forests in some far-away island of the 
Southern Sea, some hazy strip of distance 
seen from Florida, would he taste the 
tropics ? He meditated all the chances, 
without immediately deciding. Gather- 
ing up his household gods, he passed out 
of the Old Manse as its heir entered, and 
before the end of summer was domesti- 
cated in the custom-house of his native 
town of Salem. This was in the year 
1846. 

Upon leaving the Old Manse he pub- 
lished the Mosses, announcing that it was 
220 



IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 



the last collection of tales he should put 
forth. Those who knew him and recog- 
nized his value to our literature, trembled 
lest this was the last word from one who 
spoke only pearls and rubies. It was a 
foolish fear. The sun must shine — the 
sea must roll — the bird must sing, and 
the poet write. During his life in Salem, 
of which the introduction to the Scarlet 
Letter describes the official aspect, he 
wrote that romance. It is inspired by 
the spirit of the place. It presents more 
vividly than any history the gloomy pic- 
turesqueness of early New England life. 
There is no strain in our literature so 
characteristic or more real than that 
which Hawthorne had successfully at- 
tempted in several of his earlier sketches, 
and of which the Scarlet Letter is the 
great triumph. It became immediately 
popular, and directly placed the writer of 
stories for a small circle among the 
world's masters of romance. 

Times meanwhile changed, and Presi- 
dents with them. General Tyler was 

221 



Iftatbaniel fbawtborne 



elected, and the Salem Collector retired. 
It is one of the romantic points of Haw- 
thorne's quiet life, that its changes have 
been so frequently determined by politi- 
cal events, which, of all others, are the 
most entirely foreign to his tastes and 
habits. He retired to the hills of Berk- 
shire, the eye of the world now regard- 
ing his movements. There he lived a 
year or two in a little red cottage upon 
the "Stockbridge Bowl," as a small lake 
near that town is called. In this retreat 
he wrote the House of the Seven Gables, 
which more deeply confirmed the literary 
position already acquired for him by the 
first romance. The scene is laid in Salem, 
as if he could not escape a strange fasci- 
nation in the witch-haunted town of our 
early history. It is the same black can- 
vas upon which plays the rainbow-flash 
of his fancy, never, in its brightest mo- 
ment, more than illuminating the gloom. 
This marks all his writings. They have 
a terrible beauty, like the Siren, and their 
fascination is sure. 

222 



IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 



After six years of absence, Hawthorne 
has returned to Concord, where he has 
purchased a small house formerly occu- 
pied by Orphic Alcott. When that phi- 
losopher came into possession, it was a 
miserable house of two peaked gables. 
But the genius which recreated itself in 
devising graceful summer-houses, like 
that for Mr. Emerson, already noticed, 
soon smoothed the new residence into 
some kind of comeliness. It was an old 
house when Mr. Alcott entered it, but 
his tasteful finger touched it with pic- 
turesque grace. Not like a tired old 
drudge of a house, rusting into unhon- 
ored decay, but with a modest freshness 
that does not belie the innate sobriety of 
a venerable New England farm-house, 
the present residence of our author stands 
withdrawn a few yards from the high 
road to Boston, along which marched the 
British soldiers to Concord bridge. It 
lies at the foot of a wooded hill, a neat 
house of a ''rusty olive hue," with a 
porch in front, and a central peak and a 
223 



IRatbanfel Ibawtborne 



piazza at each end. The genius for sum- 
mer-houses has had full play upon the 
hill behind. Here, upon the homely 
steppes of Concord, is a strain of Persia. 
Mr. Alcott built terraces, and arbors, and 
pavilions, of boughs and rough stems of 
trees, revealing — somewhat inadequately, 
perhaps — the hanging gardens of delight 
that adorn the Babylon of his Orphic 
imagination. The hill-side is no unapt 
emblem of his intellectual habit, which 
garnishes the arid commonplaces of life 
with a cold poetic aurora, forgetting that 
it is the inexorable law of light to de- 
form as well as adorn. Treating life as a 
grand epic poem, the philosopher Alcott 
forgets that Homer must nod, or we 
should all fall asleep. The world would 
not be very beautiful nor interesting, if it 
were all one huge summit of Mont Blanc. 
Unhappily, the terraced hill-side, like 
the summer-house upon Mr. Emerson's 
lawn, "lacks technical arrangement," 
and the wild winds play with these archi- 
tectural toys of fancy, like lions with 
224 



matbaniel Ibawtborne 



humming-birds. They are gradually fall- 
ing, shattered, — and disappearing. Fine 
locust-trees shade them, and ornament 
the hill with perennial beauty. The hang- 
ing gardens of Semiramis were not more 
fragrant than Hawthorne's hill-side dur- 
ing the June blossoming of the locusts. 
A few young elms, some white pines and 
young oaks complete the catalogue of 
trees. A light breeze constantly fans the 
brow of the hill, making harps of the 
tree-tops, and singing to our author, who 
"with a book in my hand, or an unwrit- 
ten book in my thoughts," lies stretched 
beneath them in the shade. 

From the height of the hill the eye 
courses, unrestrained, over the solitary 
landscape of Concord, broad and still, 
broken only by the slight wooded undu- 
lations of insignificant hillocks. The 
river is not visible, nor any gleam of 
lake. Walden Pond is just behind the 
wood in front, and not far away over the 
meadows sluggishly steals the river. It 
is the most quiet of prospects. Kight 
225 



IRatbanlel Ibawtborne 



acres of good land lie in front of the 
house, across the road, and in the rear 
the estate extends a little distance over 
the brow of the hill. 

This latter is not good garden- ground, 
but it yields that other crop which the 
poet ** gathers in a song." Perhaps the 
world will forgive our author that he is 
not a prize farmer, and makes but an in- 
different figure at the annual cattle-show. 
We have seen that he is more nomadic 
than agricultural. He has wandered 
from spot to spot, pitching a temporary- 
tent, then striking it for ** fresh fields 
and pastures new." It is natural, there- 
fore, that he should call his house * * The 
Wayside," — a bench upon the road where 
he sits for a while before passing on. If 
the wayfarer finds him upon that bench 
he shall have rare pleasure in sitting 
with him, yet shudder while he stays. 
For the pictures of our poet have more 
than the shadows of Rembrandt. If you 
listen to his story, the lonely pastures 
and dull towns of our dear old homely 
226 



IRatbanlel Ibawtborne 



New England shall become suddenly as 
radiant with grace and terrible with trag- 
edy as any country and any time. The 
waning afternoon in Concord, in which 
the blue-frocked farmers are reaping and 
hoeing, shall set in pensive glory. The 
woods will forever after be haunted with 
strange forms. You will hear whispers, 
and music *'i' the air." In the softest 
morning you will suspect sadness ; in the 
most fervent noon, a nameless terror. It 
is because the imagination of our author 
treads the almost imperceptible line be- 
tween the natural and the supernatural. 
We are all conscious of striking it some- 
times. But we avoid it. We recoil and 
hurry away, nor dare to glance over our 
shoulders lest we should see phantoms. 
What are these tales of supernatural ap- 
pearances, as well authenticated as any 
news of the day,— and what is the sphere 
which they imply? What is the more 
subtle intellectual apprehension of fate 
and its influence upon imagination and 
life? Whatever it is, it is the mystery 
227 



IRatbanlel Ibawtborne 



of the fascination of these tales. They 
converse with that dreadful realm as with 
our real world. The light of our sun is 
poured by genius upon the phantoms we 
did not dare to contemplate, and lo? 
they are ourselves, unmasked, and play- 
ing our many parts. An unutterable sad- 
ness seizes the reader, as the inevitable 
black thread appears. For here Genius 
assures us what we trembled to suspect, 
but could not avoid suspecting, that the 
black thread is inwoven with all forms 
of life, with all development of char- 
acter. 

It is for this peculiarity, which harmo- 
nizes so well with ancient places, whose 
pensive silence seems the trance of mem- 
ory musing over the young and lovely 
life that illuminated its lost years, — that 
Hawthorne is so intimately associated 
with the " Old Manse." Yet that was 
but the tent of a night for him. Already 
with the Blithedale Romance, which is 
dated from Concord, a new interest be- 
gins to cluster around "The Wayside." 
228 



IFlatbaniel Ibawtborne 



I know not how I can more fitly con- 
clude these reminiscences of Concord and 
Hawthorne, whose own stories have al- 
ways a saddening close, than by relating 
an occurrence which blighted to many 
hearts the beauty of the quiet Concord 
river, and seemed not inconsonant with 
its lonely landscape. It has the further 
fitness of typifying the operation of our 
author's imagination : a tranquil stream, 
clear and bright with sunny gleams, 
crowned with lilies and graceful with 
swaying grass, yet doing terrible deeds 
inexorably, and therefore forever after, 
of a shadowed beauty. 

Martha was the daughter of a plain 
Concord farmer, a girl of delicate and 
shy temperament, who excelled so much 
in study that she was sent to a fine acad- 
emy in a neighboring town, and won all 
the honors of the course. She met at 
the school, and in the society of the 
place, a refinement and cultivation, a 
social gayety and grace, which were en- 
tirely unknown in the hard life she had 
229 



IRatbanlel Ibawtborne 

led at home, and which by their very 
novelty, as well as because they harmo- 
nized with her own nature and dreams, 
were doubly beautiful and fascinating. 
She enjoyed this life to the full, while 
her timidity kept her only a spectator ; 
and she ornamented it with a fresher 
grace, suggestive of the woods and fields, 
when she ventured to engage in the airy 
game. It was a sphere for her capacities 
and talents. She shone in it, and the 
consciousness of a true position and 
genial appreciation gave her the full use 
of all her powers. She admired and was 
admired. She was surrounded by grati- 
fications of taste, by the stimulants and 
rewards of ambition. The world was 
happy, and she was worthy to live in it. 
But at times a cloud suddenly dashed 
athwart the sun — a shadow stole, dark 
and chill, to the very edge of the charmed 
circle in which she stood. She knew well 
what it was, and what it foretold, but she 
would not pause nor heed. The sun 
shone again ; the future smiled ; youth, 
230 



IFlatbanicl Ibawtborne 



beauty, and all gentle hopes and thoughts 
bathed the moment in lambent light. 

But school-days ended at last, and with 
the receding town in which they had 
been passed, the bright days of life dis- 
appeared, and forever. It is probable 
that the girl's fancy had been fed, per- 
haps indiscreetly pampered, by her ex- 
perience there. But it was no fairy-land. 
It was an academy town in New Eng- 
land, and the fact that it was so alluring 
is a fair indication of the kind of life 
from which she had emerged, and to 
which she now returned. What could 
she do ? In the dreary round of petty 
details, in the incessant drudgery of a 
poor farmer's household, with no com- 
panions of any sympathy — for the family 
of a hard-working New England farmer 
are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pas- 
toral poetry, nor are cow-boys Corydons, 
— with no opportunity of retirement and 
cultivation, for reading and studying, 
which is always voted "stuff" under 
such circumstances, — the light suddenly 
231 



Batbaniel Ibavvtborne 



quenched out of life, what was she to 
do? 

"Adapt herself to her circumstances. 
Why had she shot from her sphere in this 
silly way?" demands unanimous com- 
mon sense in valiant heroics. 

The simple answer is, that she had 
only used all her opportunities, and that, 
although it was no fault of hers that the 
routine of her life was in every way re- 
pulsive, she did struggle to accommodate 
herself to it, — and failed. When she 
found it impossible to drag on at home, 
she became an inmate of a refined and 
cultivated household in the village, where 
she had opportunity to follow her own 
fancies, and to associate with educated 
and attractive persons. But even here 
she could not escape the feeling that it 
was all temporary, that her position was 
one of dependence ; and her pride, now 
grown morbid often drove her from the 
very society which alone was agreeable 
to her. This was all genuine. There 
was not the slightest strain of the femnie 

232 



IWatbaniel Ibawtborne 



incomprise in her demeanor. She was 
always shy and silent, with a touching 
reserve which won interest and confi- 
dence, but left also a vague sadness in 
the mind of the observer. After a few 
months she made another effort to rend 
the cloud which was gradually darken- 
ing around her, and opened a school for 
young children. But although the in- 
terest of friends secured for her a partial 
success, her gravity and sadness failed 
to excite the sympathy of her pupils, who 
missed in her the playful gayety always 
most winning to children. Martha, how- 
ever, pushed bravely on, a figure of tragic 
sobriety to all who watched her course. 
The farmers thought her a strange girl, 
and wondered at the ways of a farmer's 
daughter who was not content to milk 
cows, and chum butter, and fry pork, 
without further hope or thought. The 
good clergyman of the town, interested 
in her situation, sought a confidence she 
did not care to bestow, and so, doling 
out a, b^ c, to a wild group of boys and 
233 



IWatbanfel Ibawtborne 



girls, she found that she could not untie 
the Gordian knot of her life, and felt, 
with terror, that it must be cut. 

One summer evening she left her 
father's house and walked into the fields 
alone. Night came, but Martha did not 
return. The family became anxious, 
inquired if anyone had noticed the di- 
rection in which she went, learned from 
the neighbors that she was not visiting, 
that there was no lecture nor meeting to 
detain her, and wonder passed into ap- 
prehension. Neighbors went into the 
adjacent woods and called, but received 
no answer. Every instant the awful 
shadow of some dread event solemnized 
the gathering groups. Everyone thought 
what no one dared to whisper, until a 
low voice suggested " the river." Then, 
with the swiftness of certainty, all friends, 
far and near, were roused, and thronged 
along the banks of the stream. Torches 
flashed in boats that put off in the terrible 
search. Hawthorne, then living in the 
Old Manse, was summoned, and the man 
234 



IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 



whom the villagers had only seen at 
morning as a musing spectre in his gar- 
den, now appeared among them at night 
to devote his strong arm and steady heart 
to their service. The boats drifted slowly 
down the stream — the torches flared 
strangely upon the black repose of the 
water, and upon the long, slim grasses 
that, weeping, fringed the marge. Upon 
banks, silent and awe-stricken crowds 
hastened along, eager and dreading to 
find the slightest trace of what they 
sought. Suddenly they came upon a 
few articles of dress, heavy with the 
night dew. No one spoke, for no one 
had doubted the result. It was clear that 
Martha had strayed to the river, and 
quietly gained the repose she sought. 
The boats gathered round the spot. 
With every implement that could be 
of service the melancholy task began. 
Long intervals of fearful silence ensued, 
but at length, toward midnight, the sweet 
face of the dead girl was raised more 

235 



Tlatbanlel Ibawtborne 



placidly to the stars than ever it had been 

to the sun. 

Oh I is it weed, or fish, or floating hair,— 

A tress o' gfolden hair, 

O' drownM maiden's hair, 

Above the nets at sea ? 
"Was never salmon yet that shone so fair 

Among the stakes on Dee. 

So ended the village tragedy. The 
reader may possibly find in it the origi- 
nal of the thrilling conclusion of the 
Blithedale Romance, and learn anew 
that dark as is the thread with which 
Hawthorne weaves his spells, it is no 
darker than those with which tragedies 
are spun, even in regions apparently so 
torpid as Concord. 



236 



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